


Mirror, Mirror

by azhdarchidaen



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aromantic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:58:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azhdarchidaen/pseuds/azhdarchidaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mabel comes across an old and intricate-looking hand-mirror, flawless except for a central crack, Dipper can't understand why she's so enamored with it. If anything, he thinks it comes across as creepy. Why is everyone seeing something in it that he isn't? </p><p>But as the it starts to cast its apparently harmless charms over more and more of the visitors to the Shack, he can't help but start to wonder -- maybe it's not the mirror that's broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love is Patient

_“Cow!”_ came a gleeful shout from the seat next to Dipper, though he barely had time to register it before he felt a swift punch in the gut. He let out a quick _oof_  of pain before gathering himself enough to respond.

“Mabel--” he started.

“--Whoops! Missed your shoulder. Sorry, bro-bro.”

“Mabel, that’s not how this game works! You’re only supposed to punch people when you see a Volkswagen!” he said.

“Not if you’re using punch _bingo cards_!” she said gleefully, waving one of the road trip-game punchouts they’d found buried in the gift shop last week. He snatched it from her hand.

“Cows… stop sign… _lumber truck_ … Mabel, if you keep using this card I’ll be black-and-blue before we get back to the Mystery Shack -- you could find these anywhere! Except… maybe not the.. raccoon playing banjo?” He looked up. “Why is that even _on_ here?”

“Bonus points!” Mabel said, snatching back the card. Dipper groaned.

“What?” said Stan from the front of the car. “Can’t put up with some sibling-induced pain? Just spot something yourself and punch her back."

“I don’t even have a _card!"_ Dipper protested. “That’s not fair! How is that fair?”

“Shoulda grabbed one before we left,” Stan said, right as Mabel punched Dipper in the arm.

_“Bush!”_ she shouted.

“What kind of a sadistic person made these cards in the first place?” Dipper said. “This stuff is everywhere!”

Stan just laughed. “Probably someone who didn’t realize they’d be repurposed. For _violence_.” Then his face went serious for a second. “That’s true of most things, though.”

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other nervously, until Stan turned around to look at them both.

“What, you’ve never gotten in a pillow fight?”

Dipper was about to laugh, but his eyes widened before he had the chance.

“Watch the road, _watch the road!”_

Stan’s head whipped back to the windshield, and he let out a panicked _“Woah!”_ as he tried desperately to turn back onto the pavement in time, the car having begun to veer off. For a second, it looked like he’d managed it. But then came an ominous clunk from the back, and the entire vehicle shook before he slammed on the brakes.

_“Soggy oyster crackers!”_ He yelled, punching the steering wheel.

“...That sounds like a flat tire,” Dipper said, nervously. “Should we get the spare?”

No response.

“Grunkle Stan, you _do_ have a spare, right?” Mabel asked.

“Why would I have a thing like that?” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “We’re just going to have to make this one work.”

But a quick examination of the tire was all it took for all three of them to tell that, no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t going to “make it work.” The entire thing was shredded, having hit a rock on the side of the road as Stan swerved. Dipper sighed. Looks like they weren’t going to be getting back to the Mystery Shack anytime soon after all.

It felt kind of weird to have spent the weekend away from it in the first place, like staying _away from_ your home away from home. But the week before, the Shack’s cash register had been destroyed in… well, an incident. That he was still guiltily feeling responsible for. Who knew that the psychic slugs from the forest would exude corrosive ectoplasm? The journal hadn’t mentioned _that_.

Unfortunately, cash registers -- despite their importance to money-grubbing great-uncles -- weren’t exactly a common commodity in Gravity Falls. Unwilling to order an "expensive" brand-new one, Stan had tracked down a parts dealer only slightly-less disreputable than himself to negotiate with. The catch? He lived and worked a couple hours out from Gravity Falls, and wanted Stan to come and get the thing himself. And while he’d usually be able to find a place to park the twins for a few days, their options had dwindled suspiciously quickly. Soos was spending the weekend with Melody; Wendy’s family was on a camping trip; and Dipper and Mabel weren’t particularly interested in spending a few nights with anybody else in town.

Which is how the twins had ended up as accomplices in the wild cash register-chase and stayed in some motels the past few nights that Dipper felt generous describing as “sketchy”. They were finally on their way home -- but for the unexpected hold-up.

“We could check for some tires there!” Mabel said, jolting Dipper from his thoughts. She was pointing at a sign tacked to a tree not far from them that read “Yard Sale”, complete with arrow pointing up a winding dirt driveway about a hundred feet away.

“Well _that’s_ suspiciously convenient,” Stan said.

“Not a bad idea, though,” Dipper said.

“What, a tire we can _pay_ for?”

“Or one generously gifted to travelers in need,” Mabel said cheerfully.

“You’re giving ‘em too much credit, kid,” Stan said. “These people are literally selling their junk.”

“Generously and possibly _unknowingly_ gifted…”

“ _That’s_ my girl!” he said, rubbing her head.“-- Ok, let’s do this.”

 

* * *

“Dipper look at this!”

Mabel was holding up a gaudily ornate silvery-plated hand-mirror and poking the shiny surface with her finger as she looked into it.

“Mabel, that thing’s creepy,” he said, sighing as he set down the dusty copy of _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ he’d been checking out. Grunkle Stan had momentarily abandoned them to browse the merchandise, maintaining they’d be a good distraction for the people in charge should things go awry.

“No it’s not,” she said. “It’s beautiful!”

“...It looks like it belonged to a Transylvanian count that murdered people in their sleep. Plus, it has a crack in the middle”

She pouted momentarily. “You never like my stuff.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re planning on buying that.”

“Why not?” she said. “I like it.”

Almost instantly after the words had left her mouth, the old man who’d first greeted them as being in charge of the sale was at their side.

_Well that’s not suspicious at ALL…_ Dipper thought.

“Interesting choice, young lady,” the man said. “Yes, interesting, interesting…”

They both looked at him, Dipper skeptical and Mabel pleased.

“Thanks,” she said. “How much are you--”

“--KIDS. We’re going! _Now!”_

Stan sped past them, tire in hand (or rather, arms, as he was technically hugging it…) and dashing down the driveway. He shoved into Dipper slightly as he did so, causing him to stumble.

“Coming!” Mabel shouted, and raced to catch him. Dipper was about to join them, but his momentary loss of balance was just enough time for the old guy to grab his shoulder and clench it tightly.

_“AH!”_ he shouted, jumping about a foot in the air -- it took him a moment to realize it was just the old man. “...oh… um.... you’ll be wanting us to… pay for that? I’ve got some quarters in my pocket but…”

“Consider it on the house,” he said to him. “I’d rather see the old thing leave.”

Dipper’s eyes widened. “So there _is_ something wrong with it! And you’re trying to trick Ma-- my sister -- into leaving with it?

The old man eyed him curiously. “You’re suspicious of it…” he muttered. “No one’s _ever_ suspicious of it, especially not one so… young.”

“What’s it going to do, suck out her soul?” Dipper asked frantically. “Trick her by showing her heart’s desire?”

“Oh, nothing like that… though her heart does have something to do with it,” the man chuckled. “But so long as nothing gets out of hand, you both should be fine. Just wait and see.”

Dipper frowned at him, about to ask more, when he was interrupted by a loud car horn and Grunkle Stan’s shout from the base of the hill.

“ _Kid!_ We’re _leaving!”_

He hesitated. The yard sale man just smiled at him. “Have a nice day, boy,” he said, waving.

Dipper wasn’t so sure it was sincere.

 

* * *

 

“I still don’t like the feeling of this,” Dipper muttered, glancing at the mirror once last time as he and Mabel piled back into the car.

“Relax,” Mabel said cheerfully, “we’ve seen a lot this summer, but right now? We’re outside the Gravity Falls city limits. If something weird’s going on, it wouldn’t be all the way out _here._ I haven’t seen anything but cows, and they’re not very suspicious.” Suddenly she frowned _“...Usually.”_

“I guess you’re right,” Dipper said. “There’s not really anything else unusual out here...”

Suddenly, he felt a punch in the arm.

“Mabel, why--?”

_“--Raccoon playing the banjo!”_

 

 


	2. Love is Not Self-Seeking

“Soos, Soos, look what I got!” Mabel shouted, waving her new mirror around in the air as they entered the door to the Mystery Shack. Their slight delay in returning meant that the handyman’s truck was parked outside by the time they’d arrived.

“Woah,” he said, taking it as Mabel offered it to him to hold. “That is one fancy doodad, dude.”

“It’s sophisticated,” Mabel said, striking a pose a bit like an awkward curtsey.

“Try ‘suspicious’,” Dipper muttered, but he didn’t think Mabel heard.

“Then I guess it’s _suspis_ -ticated,” she said, grinning back at him -- apparently she had. Dipper just rolled his eyes.

“So, you dudes have a good trip?” Soos said.

“Yeah, I guess it was--” Dipper started.

“We stole a tire!” Mabel chimed in.

“Yes,” he conceded. “Yes, we did.”

“Intense,” Soos said, nodding thoughtfully.

“Only a little bit,” Mabel said. “Turns out when you take one off somebody’s car, they can’t exactly chase you so easy. Then we crossed county lines and… well, you know.”

“Hmmm,” Soos said. “Such cleverness.”

There was a sound from the side of the room as the doors swung open and Stan walked into the Shack gift shop where they were all talking.

“Hey, what’s this?” he said. “Socialization time? Vacation’s over -- we gotta re-open.”

“We still don’t have a cash register working,” Dipper pointed out.

“Yeah well that changes in about two minutes. Soos, help me with this thing,” he said, gesturing backwards to the open door and waiting car, where the new register as still sitting.

“Sure thing, Mister Pines!”

 

As Soos and Stan headed outside, Mabel planted herself on the counter, laughing to herself.

“Pffft…” she said. _“Suspisticated._ ”

“Mabel, it’s not funny!” Dipper protested. “That thing is giving me the creeps.”

“Everything gives you the creeps,” she  said. “You’re like the creeps-master.”

“I’m being serious!” he said, then paused. “I wonder if there’s anything in the journal about creepy mirrors.”

Mabel laughed again. “Dipper, the mirror isn’t even from Gravity Falls. Why would it be in the journal?”

“Because it’s weird!”

“Sometimes I think all you care about is weird stuff,” she said, giving what sounded like a long-suffering sigh and flopping back on the desk. She shot back up almost immediately after. “Betcha’ two bucks it isn’t in there.”

“Bet you there’s something weird about it whether it’s in there or not,” Dipper shot back.

“Deal,” she said. “But only if you accept _my_ wager first.”

He sighed. “You’ve been spending too much time with Stan.”

She waved her hand. “And? You’ve been spending too much time with a boring old book. We’re even!” she paused, her face breaking into a grin. “Or not so even, when you lose.”

 

***

 

It was a couple of days or so after forking over two dollars, the journal having absolutely no information on mirrors that gave people the heebie-jeebies whatsoever, that Dipper finally experienced something he considered proper evidence for his theory. But it was in many respects a bittersweet victory.

To be fair, the fact that Mabel -- and now, it seemed, Soos -- had grown so weirdly attached to the the thing in a suspiciously short amount of time was probably evidence of something. But not exactly something he could bring to Mabel that she should get rid of it.

Sort of the opposite, actually.

It was a slower-than-usual afternoon, with only a handful of visitors trickling in and out of the Shack, and the muggy 2 o’clock heat made it pass even slower than usual. Mabel lay flopped across the counter, near the new cash register, and Soos was in a similar pose --  on the floor.

Dipper was sitting on the counter as well, chewing on the end of his pen. He’d ripped a crossword puzzle from the morning paper and was still stuck on some of the clues.

“Mabel,” he said, “do you know a four-letter word for--”

“Try N-E-R-D,” she said, rolling over on the counter.

He sighed. “That wouldn’t even fit right, there’s definitely an ‘O’ in it.”

“Okay then, D-O-R-K.”

Dipper just rolled his eyes. He was about to ask a question about another word on the list when Soos sat up suddenly.

“Did you dudes see that?” he asked, pointing to the wall. Specifically at the shelf on it where Mabel’s recently-acquired mirror was resting, facing towards them.

“See what?” Dipper said, excitedly, word puzzles forgotten.

“The mirror,” Soos said. “There was a thing in it.”

“A thing?” Mabel asked.

“A person-thing. Except…. there weren’t any people to reflect in it,” Soos’ eyes widened. “A vampire!”

“Vampires don’t show up in mirrors, Soos, it’s the other way around,” Dipper said, getting up to take a closer look.

“A reverse vampire!” Soos said.

“Maybe something’s trapped inside?” Dipper suggested as an alternative. He grabbed the mirror and gazed into it deeply. Disappointingly, there was nothing there.

“I guess it’s gone, whatever it is,” he said, showing the mirror to Soos and Mabel. But bother their eyes widened.

“There’s a girl in there!” Mabel said. “She’s awfully blurry though….”

“Blurry?” Soos said. “Mabel, that’s Melody!”

“Whaaaaaaat?” Mabel asked. “She doesn’t look anything like her!”

Dipper turned the mirror back to him, wondering how he could have missed the mystery girl -- maybe she’d left the frame? But there still wasn’t anyone there.

“I’m telling you, that’s Melody!” Soos said.

“But she…. wait a minute!” Mabel said sticking her finger in the air in a classic "Eureka!" pose. “What if we’re seeing different girls? You’re seeing Melody, but I’m seeing…. someone else? Who’s kinda blurry.”

“Hmmm…” Soos said. “Intriguing theory.”

“Dipper, who do you see?” Mabel asked. He looked at her nervously. Suddenly, he felt strange about the whole thing. About not actually seeing anyone at all, about Soos and Mabel being so excited -- all of it.

“Oh, um, you know,” he said. “A girl. She’s…. I don’t know, she’s blurry too.”

“Excellent,” Mabel said, rubbing her hands together. Soos and Dipper looked at her curiously.

Before they could ask her more questions, Mabel spoke again. “I think we need to conduct an experiment.”

“What?” Dipper said “Isn't that like, my line? Usually?”

She patted him on the shoulder. “Maybe, bro-bro. But I think this one might involve _my_ area of expertise…”

 

***

 

“Mabel’s area of expertise” was apparently talking to everyone who visited the Mystery Shack that day. Which Dipper had to admit definitely wouldn’t have been his. But as far as he could tell, a pattern was yet to emerge in her questioning.

Whenever someone came through the gift shop, Mabel would show off the mirror, usually after talking it up a little bit as something mysterious and ancient. Dipper had to admit -- she’d learned the skill (from Stan, no doubt) well. Then she’d ask them to look deep inside and tell her what they saw.

A number of guests, many of them younger, agreed with Mabel’s own description (...and Dipper's lie). They saw blurry figures, sometimes without even being able to offer a possible gender, but people nonetheless.

One man looked at her in amazement, and told her the figure in her mirror was his husband, and _“how did she do that?”_

Another said he saw his fiancée, which surprised him since she was in California at the moment.

Two young women, who’d entered together holding hands, giggled and told her they saw each other -- not at the same time, oddly enough, but they were able to make out the _opposite_ girl inside.

They got as wide a variety of answers as visitors. Dipper felt his heart sinking, though, as it became clearer and clearer to him that the only one he wasn’t hearing was “no one”. As they closed up for the day, he leaned towards where Mabel was sitting.

“Soooo,” he said kicking his legs nervously and trying to sound casual, “any word on the success of the experiment?”

She looked at him incredulously. “Well _duh_ ,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious? Yes!”

“Oh, really?” he said, the nervousness creeping up his chest and into his voice. “What… um… what’s that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Dipper,” she said. “It’s a _love mirror_.”

“A what?”

“It’s a love mirror! It shows you the person you love! Or… maybe who you will? I’m not sure about the blurry ones. I think those ones are just possibilities.” She got a kind of dreamy-happy look on her face. “Beautiful, beautiful possibilities…”

“What do you mean, who you love?” Dipper asked, his voice catching in his throat. “Like, who you’re going to fall in love with?”

Mabel gripped his cheeks. “Your _soulmate_ ,” she said dramatically, then got an excited look on her face. “Or maybe soul _mates_? -- I don’t think we got anyone with more than one, so that one’s still up in the air.”

She grinned at him, continuing. “I _knew_ there was something beautiful about it,” she said. “And isn’t it just great? It made like... _everyone’s day_ today. They were so happy! About _love_.”

Dipper felt the funny feeling in his stomach growing stronger as Mabel slid down against the countertop, grinning. He picked up the mirror one more time, begging it to work right just once.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, staring into its empty surface. He couldn’t even see his own reflection in it, much less someone else’s. “....About love.”


	3. Love Always Hopes

“ _Stupid_ mirror, _stupid_ yard sale, _stupid_ old man…” Dipper muttered from where he sat behind the Mystery Shack, arms wrapped over his knees and face pulled into a frown. Ever since yesterday, he’d been racking his brains for some alternative explanation of the mirror’s effects.

But he was coming up blank.

In fact, the only thing racing through his mind at the moment was something else Mabel had said yesterday, and it wasn’t helping.

_“Sometimes I think all you care about is weird stuff.”_

Dipper sighed. Was that really all there was to him? He might get a little obsessed with things but he still _cared_ about people, right?

It was just... every time he tried to tell himself that, he kept seeing the blank surface of the mirror staring back at him.

He curled into himself more, gripping his leg so tightly that he could start to feel fingernails digging into his skin. He didn't feel right. He felt like there was something wrong with him... he felt so frustrated with himself that he wanted to disappear into the ground. None of this made any sense.

Or maybe it did, and he just didn’t want to admit it.

“Dipper?” came a voice from somewhere nearby, and his heart clenched up. He’d recognize Wendy’s voice anywhere. No no no _no no_ , not right now, not _her_ of all people right now…. this couldn’t be happening.

“You okay, bud?” she said, crouching down so they were at eye level and putting a hand on his shoulder. It was happening.

“I’m fine,” he managed, ignoring the fact that the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach had just intensified a little.

“...You don’t look so ‘fine’,” she said, easing back a little. “You wanna talk about it?”

 _No. Definitely not. I don’t think I’ll ever want to talk about it,_ his brain was screaming. But for some reason, whatever one his mouth didn’t seem to listen to his brain very often around Wendy, what actually came out was:

“...maybe a little bit.”

 _Why did you say that?_ He internally berated himself as she slid down taking a seat on the ground next to him, one arm resting lazily on her knee.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll listen a little bit. What’s up?”

“Have you ever….?” he started, then trailed off. He couldn’t start out like that. Hang on. Start that sentence over. “I mean, do you…” nope, nope. He didn’t like where that one was going either.

He sighed, loosening up a little and looking Wendy in the eye. “...Mabel found this mirror the other day," he said, deciding the best thing to do was just spit out the facts. It seemed like the way the least could go wrong. “While we were on our road trip… it’s a long story. But she brought it home with her and it’s doing something weird now.”

“Seems like "weird" would be right up your alley,” Wendy said, looking back at him. “So there’s more to it than that?”

“It’s showing people’s reflections,” Dipper said. “Not people’s own reflections, the reflections of other people. It’s got some kind of connection to like, see into their hearts and show the people... show them the people they’re married to, their girlfriends, that kind of thing.”

Wendy sucked in a deep breath. “Dipper…” she said slowly, “I thought we talked about--”

“--It’s not that!” he said, throwing his hands out in front of him in frustration. He trusted her, and he wanted to get his feelings out, but why did Wendy have to be the absolute best _and_ worst person to talk to about this at the same time?

Noticing her relax a little, but also lean forward in what might have been concern, he continued.

“I mean, it _is_ about what I saw in the mirror,” he said. “But it’s not… I didn’t see you, or anything, because I didn’t see _anybody_.”

“Anybody at all?” she asked. He wasn’t sure if she was skeptical or clarifying. He sighed and hoped for the latter.

“It was completely blank,” he replied.

She leaned back against the wall of the Shack, crossing both her arms now as she rested them loosely. She looked upwards slightly, eyes closed and apparently in thought.

It was a while before she spoke.

“Wonder if I should maybe take a look in it too,” she finally said.

Dipper felt his heart sink. It wasn’t exactly the reassurance he was looking for, knowing another person seemed care about what they saw in that mirror. Why had he told Wendy about this? Now she _knew_ , and it didn’t change anything.

“I… guess you’d probably get as excited as everybody else did,” he said, trying not to let his voice betray his disappointment. Wendy gave him a funny look.

“Dipper,” she said. “Dude, do you really think I care what person some stupid mirror shows me?”

“I--” he started, but she wasn’t done talking.

“The only reason _I’d_ want a look is to know if I’d see the same thing _you_ did.”

His eyes widened. “You don’t think it’s some kind of fluke?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but it’d sure explain a lot of... stuff.”

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, but Dipper’s curiosity -- and sudden feeling of what might have been hope -- got the better of him.

“Stuff like what?” he asked, hoping he wasn’t prying too much.

“Stuff like how every relationship I’ve ever been in has felt _super weird_ ,” she said, throwing one of her arms out in a gesture remarkably similar to the one Dipper had made just moments before. Suddenly, he got the funny feeling that some tables in the conversation had turned. He hoped he’d be as good at listening to Wendy as she was to him -- this was newer ground.

“Everybody always acts like they’re supposed to be some... be-all-end-all,” she said, “but they never _feel_ that way. At first I thought I just hadn’t found the right guy, or maybe I wasn’t even _into_ guys, but after a while… you start to notice that to them, it actually  _is_.”

“...Like with Robbie?” Dipper asked hesitantly. He didn't know if it was still a sore spot, but... well...

Wendy let out a long breath. “ _Exactly_ like with Robbie,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t want anything getting weird with you, you know? Even without the age thing, I’m tired of stuff getting messed up with people I actually _like_ because I don’t feel the same way about them. Like maybe I _can’t_ feel the same way about them.”

“Do you really think that might be it?” he said. “That there might be people that just… don’t feel that way? Ever?”

She finally gave him a wry smile, the sort of expression he was more used to seeing on her face. “I think we’ve seen stuff weirder than that this summer,” she offered.

“And do you really think…” he trailed off, trying to figure out how he felt about the idea, “if there are, that you and I… that _we_ ’re both like that?”

She shrugged. “I mean our stories aren’t _super_ similar,” she said. “At this point, at least, I don’t think you’re the veteran of like, a thousand break-ups...”

“I mean... I _am_ one of never being able to ask someone to be my partner in gym class square dancing,” he offered. Wendy choked on a laugh, putting a fist up to her mouth to stop it.

“Oh man,” she said, gathering herself together, “Square-dancing. The _worst_ , dude.”

He laughed too, glad to have apparently broken the tension.

“You know,” she said, face softening a little bit, “if it is true -- for both of us -- as far as people go, I’m pretty cool with the person I’m like with feeling a little weird being you.”

Dipper’s face flushed red at the comment, and he could feel his heart rate awkwardly leapfrog. Apparently starting to dispel what he thought were romantic feelings didn’t make compliments from someone he thought as highly of as Wendy feel any different.

Actually, that almost made everything make more sense.

“I… I’m pretty cool with that too,” he squeaked out.

“I mean,” she said, grinning back, possibly slightly at the clunky nature of his response, “we _do_ make a pretty good team.”

"Y-Yeah..." he said, wanting to come up with something snappy in response. But before anything resembling a clever comment managed to formulate, there was a shattering sound from somewhere behind them.

“ _That_ sounded like a window,” Wendy said, head shooting up in attention.

“...It also definitely sounded like it came from the Shack,” he added, already clambering up from the ground.

“Ten bucks it’s something weird?” she said joining him.

“I know better than to take that bet.”

“Touché.”

“Something good-weird though,” he said. “Not… well, you know.”

“Hey, _we’re_ good-weird,” she said back, affectionately throwing a fist at his shoulder.

“I meant like. Funny feeling weird,” he said.

“So the funny feelings are all gone?” she asked him.

Dipper thought about it for a second. Their conversation _had_ reassured him a lot. At the very least, he felt a lot less like there was something wrong with him. But it was a lot to take in. And it was a lot that, no matter how much better he felt about it, was definitely pretty different from the norm.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“No,” he admitted to her, “there are definitely still some funny feelings there.”

“Good,” she replied, “‘Cause mine still aren’t either.”

“You think two people with some funny feelings can take on whatever’s happening?” he said, fully aware that there was a less literal layer to his question.

Something in Wendy’s voice made it clear she was answering both.

_“Absolutely.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it hasn't been so relevant until this chapter, but for the record, i'm assuming that "roadside attraction" was intended to take place earlier in season two than when it aired, very probably more towards the beginning of the season. since this story is supposed to take place sometime between "love god" and "northwest mansion noir", that would firmly put all of dipper's-sorting-out-his-romantic-feelings episodes long before any aro-realizations. 
> 
> not that that dictates anything when it comes to being aromantic, necessarily, particularly for a twelve year-old, but it's a fact that i think may have affected how i've written both him and wendy, and consequently felt like mentioning


End file.
